In the Ether
by The Red Celt
Summary: Fill for the kinkmeme-Shepard and Garrus get ahold of an exotic alien drug, get really stoned, and have sex while tripping. Rated M because, well, you get the idea.


_Authors Note-The drug in question will remain nameless, but its effects are loosely based on a combination of DXM and mushrooms, which I'm more familiar with. I don't get high anymore, though. I tried to get across what it's like to be completely fucked out of your head by using stream-of-consciousness writing, and I hope it's not too jarring. Anyway, hope you guys like it, and be sure to read/review!_

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Shepard always gets a little nauseous right as it's kicking in, and Garrus knows that it's gonna hit her hard when she lays back and refuses to throw up. Says she wants all of it to go steaming into her brain like a freight train. He puts her head in his lap and strokes her hair while her skin flushes red and his plates feel like they're burning at the edges. His mandibles are numb and his vision starts getting jumpy. The edges of the world blur and Shepard looks up at him, pupils huge, breathing deep and fast. Her pulse is racing and her fingers are already going on little adventures up and down his torso, visiting favorite places, getting lost around his waist. There, she decides to stay a while, testing the topography, tracing the crenellated edges of his thick plating and the thinner hide beneath. She closes her eyes, head lolling boneless on her neck, and arches her back as the tingly heat, like ants marching, spreads over her body. Her muscles need to move, stretch, bend, clench, and she pulls him down for a kiss.

"Is it hitting you yet?" Her voice is slurry and indistinct, and it swims through his brain like silverfish. Her fingers leave trailers of warmth on his face, switching his nerves on and off as they move, keys on a piano, touch-activated lights dancing in his eyes, and his heart is beating out of his chest.

"Mmm-hmm. Straight to the head. Damn, this is some good stuff."

"I got it pure this time, from that guy."

"Yeah. That guy." He has no idea what he's saying anymore, and he can see his words skating away, the vibrations rippling the air like bass-waves of sound. He can see them hit her and she starts rubbing her chest, kneading her breasts, like she can feel them when they break over her. Her face glows, pink-tinged and dotted with sweat, and her hair streams out like tendrils of smoke. The furniture is jumping now, sometimes there, sometimes not, changing shape just out of the corner of his eye.

Her hands are still on him, and he's starting to get hard. She loves to fuck him when they're high, needs the few hours they have to take a mental vacation, get completely ripped, and screw each other's brains out. He admits that, while he's still not used to spending his nights blitzed out of his skull, he's getting addicted to the way the whole universe is full of her and he can drown, die, and be reborn.

His erection nudges her cheek and she strokes him through his pants, almost absently, her focus torn in every direction under this assault on her brain, her body. She's soaring in the sky, weightless and full of white noise. Indistinct thoughts pop, soap bubbles, there for an instant then gone the next, leaving only a half-remembered residue behind. The particulates in the air bump against her arm and she stretches—it's luxurious, this play of muscle over bone, and she moans. The sound surrounds her lover in gelatinous waves and he slowly opens his pants, then takes her hand and slips it into his fly. She touches him, and it's like supernovas.

She sits up, waits for the dizziness to pass, giggles at the lightheadedness that follows, her eyes swimming with stars. Her legs are hydraulic pistons, and she wonders if this is how Legion feels when he walks—all servo motors and engine oil. She stretches again (one of the wonders of the galaxy, stretching), and her shirt pulls up over her stomach, a smooth expanse of unplated skin, a feast. Garrus pulls her down into his lap and she loses her balance too easily, collapsing back against him with a gasp and cry of indignation. That doesn't last long as he runs the planes of his palms up her flat belly, under her shirt, up to her breasts to squeeze them, knead them gently. She is all lithe movement as she reaches back to stroke his face, flexible in ways his own people aren't, alien and strange and beautiful and everywhere at once.

His talons skid down again, pulling her thighs apart, digging in and parting the seas, and her hair tickles his cheek when she leans back into the hollow of his cowl. She's soaking through her panties already, and she covers his hands with hers to guide him up her legs, back to her knees, up to the waistband of her pants, and then she's arching her hips so he can pull the fabric down. It catches and drags over the fine hairs, rubbing smooth and exquisite across her skin cells, each one alive and calling for attention. She wants to wrap him around her like a coat and wear him, warm and hard, smelling of sand and metal and burning, burning need.

Somehow, she is naked in his lap, and her hands are behind her back between his legs, massaging his cock. Her small digits just the right size to slip around him, past his plates, to stroke him inside. Skin on firm-but-spongy flesh, heightened senses on fire, his head swells and shrinks in time with his pulse as she fingers him, delving ever deeper and stealing his breath. He lays back on the couch and grasps at his shirt, fumbling at the buckles and yanking them open. He's disappearing beneath the waves that slide up and around in ripples from his groin. In some part of his mind he's aware of how debauched this is, taboo, forbidden, but while she's pressing and stroking him inside he can't bring himself to care. Vague images dance, merge, come apart, re-form, burst into fragments behind his closed lids. Worlds wear away, the room has no air. She lays back on him, hands relentless, and kisses his jawline with dry lips.

She turns around in segments—shoulders, arms, waist, hips, legs, like a helix—and slides down to the floor, kneeling between his legs. Muscles bunch and pull as he lifts, and she slides his pants down, unhooking them from his spurs, giving each of them a caress, squeezing rhythmically down his calves. She lifts his foot to her mouth and kisses his instep, cradling his heel in her hands like the holy grail. She's a space cadet, free-falling, one with the all, and he's here with her. It feels like nirvana. It feels like being born.

She licks her lips, serpentine, lush and full and wet, and sets a course for his toes. His digitigrade feet are rough from his boots, the texture like sandstone. A kiss here, a taste there, and she's up to the ball of his foot, giving equal attention to the turn of his ankle. Garrus is transported—no one has ever done this for him. She's worshipping at his altar, making him a saint, bathing him in light. Her mouth is between his toes, the curved talons so sharp they slice through the air like pudding, but she's not afraid. She trusts him utterly, closes her eyes and makes herself vulnerable. This . . . this is what faith feels like.

Just as much attention is given to the other foot, and his hand slides between his legs to touch himself, pumping slow, giving the occasional squeeze. His neurons are firing in random patterns and the electrical sparks are sending him all sorts of lovely messages—arousal, bliss, near-religious peace, and he can see her voice like an aurora when she says, "You're so beautiful."

Skin slides on skin as she moves up, hands on his thighs, and rubs his hips. Warm, wet heat skids over his cock, the tight ring of her lips around him as she takes him into her mouth. His mandibles quiver and flicker and his chest tightens as she works her way down, taking more and more of him, until her nose is pressed against the top of his slit. He can feel her throat working to stay relaxed, and it's all he can do to keep from making a fist in her hair and fucking her face until she can't breathe. Maybe she wants him to, but he doesn't want to hurt her. Not tonight, anyway. Tonight, they're surrounded by a strange aura of reverence.

It's different than usual, this high, and he wonders what it is in the air now that's done this. Maybe it's the batch. Maybe it's just them, synching with some passing wavelength. Garrus suspects it's just Shepard, though. She likes it when he's rough, takes his attentions when they're given, but he knows the differences in her when they make love. That's her favorite, and she's taking charge tonight. She needs to get lost, to forget what's happening in the galaxy, forget the mission for once, and just _be_. If that means getting stoned so she can do her devotions, then so be it.

Her fingers tighten on his legs and bring him back to the moment. A swirl of her tongue and he's in free-fall, a stroke of her hand and he slams back into himself. Coiled snakes twine and twist in his gut, constricting and sending shockwaves of heat radiating outward, and when she moans around him he palms the back of her head in silent encouragement.

The suction in her mouth is incredible, and if he were sober he'd be sailing over the edge right about now, but the alternating waves of numbness and blistering heat combined with the tuneless thoughts running amok inside his skull prolong the experience. He could go another eight rounds with her before reaching climax—another reason he loves this drug. He's got to remember the name of the guy she got the stuff from, because this is the single greatest feeling in the universe.

She slides up off of his cock and wipes her mouth, a thin trail of silvery damp painted on the delicate skin there. It stands out—the colors of everything in the room snap and crackle. He leans forward, takes her face in his hands, and licks her lips, first the top one, then the bottom, making sure to get the corners where the flavor of her rests in the creases. He parts her lips and runs his tongue along her teeth, and when he feels the pads of her fingers lightly brushing over his neck he feels like he can do this forever.

A drop of something, salt-saline and sweet, hits his tongue, and he pulls back to see twin tracks cutting down her cheeks. Another drop wells up behind her lids and overflows, slipping down her face to bead on her chin, then fall soundlessly to the floor. The silence is loud, pregnant with meaning that neither of them can fully understand.

Shepard opens her eyes and sees him looking, watches him as he wipes her cheek dry with his thumb, then puts it in his mouth to savor the taste. He doesn't ask about the tears. He knows. He always knows.

He stands first, then eases her to her feet and walks her backward to the bed. The high has crested now, and they'll stay at this plateau for the next six hours or so before coming back down to solid ground. She lays back on the taut sheets, sliding up to the pillows, her legs bent gracefully, like a dancer's. He touches her knees and they part under his hands to reveal her, the darker skin there flushed and ready.

As he crawls over her and his shadow slides sinewy and dark over her naked skin, she closes her eyes again and the tears roll down to the cup of her ear where they pool like tiny secret oceans. He nuzzles her neck and her arms, cool and smooth, slip between his neck and his cowl. The throbbing between his legs is insistent and his plates are buzzing as he rotates his hips into position and rocks forward, pushing into her, so deep, filling her. He meets the very end of her passage and she bows her back with a gasp at the pressure. He feels bigger than he is, fills her more than he has any right to, and she can finally let go.

He starts to move, slowly, long strokes that touch every inch of her. They hover on a knife's edge of anticipation when he pulls out until just the head of his cock is in her, then the pleasure spikes and winds around them as he slides back in, thrusting at the end to shove against that spot deep inside her that makes her eyes roll back in her head and her breath come in short gasps. He moves within her over and over and over again, and his heart swells to fill his ribcage. Soft legs tighten around his waist as he rocks on his knees, his arms full of a fierce burn, but he doesn't care. All of reality has fallen away and the only thing left is the sound of their breathing, the pulse beating fast in her throat, the senseless images murmuring in his head.

Tides go in and out, mountains erode, suns explode and die, the universe expands and contracts, and still he's making love to her. It might have been minutes or days, or both at the same time for all he knows. Her voice is breaking and harsh, and when he closes his eyes he can see the sound waves again, undulating in slow patterns that break and re-form around him. He looks down at her, and he can't make sense of her face anymore—her features shift and change, prism and shatter. The interplay of emotions that run over her are a turbulent mixture of everything at once, and he wonders how she doesn't explode with all of that going on in her head.

The pleasure builds agonizingly slow, sliding up and around them like sinking into a bath. He's lost in the rhythm he's set, his hips moving of their own volition now as he lets his head fall down, limp on his neck. He's dizzy with the high, and soon he feels the onrush of sensation begin to swell like water tension reaching its breaking point. He whispers with a mouth that feels blurry, "Are you close?"

"Yes, yes, yes—" She's saying his name like a Hail Mary and it tumbles from her lips in waterfalls. He can't take a full breath, can't speak any more, and the whole of time pauses in its tracks for an instant before the tsunami crashes over him and he's drowning, drowning. Inside her, he's coming harder than ever, and the pleasure is excruciating in its intensity. He gasps and flounders, gripping her so tight, and then she clamps down on him, her walls wrenching the orgasms out of him. One by one, they plow through him, until he thinks he might never stop. Finally, with one last groan that breaks into a sob, the climax ends and he's aching, hollow, floating on a cloud, reborn. Shepard clings to him, each heavy breath carrying an edge of relief, as she rides out the aftershocks that continue to squeeze and flutter around him.

He stays inside her, wrapped up in her, as long as he can until his traitor body tells him he has to lay down or fall down. He rolls onto his side and takes her with him, unwilling to let her go just yet. The high has been damped down for now, and they let the quiet spin out between them. It doesn't take long for her to fall asleep, dreaming odd and abstract dreams with no meaning. There will be no nightmares tonight, he knows—when she sleeps it off, she goes into a kind of coma for a few hours and will awake more rested than she's been in days. He curls around her protectively then pulls the blankets up and closes his eyes, hoping that maybe she can find a little peace. It's what she deserves, and sometimes feels like more than he can give, but he tries anyway.

It doesn't take long for sleep to find him, but when it does, she's there waiting for him.


End file.
